American Political Culture

AmericanPoliticalCulture Why didn’t people shoot President Obama? Why do we pay taxes? Why don’t we all take to the streets to protest Wall Street?

Definition of PoliticalCulture • a set of norms, beliefs, traditions, and values oriented toward the political system that are for the most part shared by the society and are relatively unique to a political system

The AmericanPoliticalCulture • Is there an Americanpoliticalculture? • Has it disappeared? Why or Why Not? • How does it affect public policy?

Sources of Political Culture • American Revolutiion • Constitution • Protection of the individual

Tenets of Classical Liberalism • Individual have natural rights • Individuals are equal under the law • Government should be limited • Government's #1 purpose is to serve individuals not itself

Declaration of Independence • All men are created equal • Endowed with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness • Government derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Do you believe in Liberty? • What is Liberty? • The belief that individuals should be free to act and think as they choose, provided they do not infringe unreasonably on the freedom and well being of others.

Individual Responsibility • A commitment to personal responsibility, self sufficiency, and material accumulation • The belief that hard work pays off • What happens if we give up this belief? What if only some give it up?

It is the responsibility of the state to take care of poor people who can’t take care of themselves. • Agree or Disagree?

People like me and my family have a good chance of improving our standard of living. • Agree or Disagree?

Something to think about! • Government should reduce income inequality. • Government should provide all Americans with a guaranteed income. • Luck is more important than hard work in getting ahead. • What would those making less than $12k think?

Values are shared by the least and the most fortunate • Do you believe in Equality?

Equality • Americans have a strong commitment to legal, social and political equality. • Not equality of outcomes or economic equality • Public Support for Affirmative Action • Equality more of a “contested” concept

Clinton/Obama Health Care Plan • large government operation • remove control from the market • restrict the choices of individuals • Promote equality of outcomes • “a government takeover of your life “ • “automatically enrolled in a government run health alliance”

Future of Freedom FoundationWhy America hates SocialismValues Shape Policy Outcomes • Policies are suspect if they conflict with dominant politicalculture. • large government operation • remove control from the market • restrict the choices of individuals • Promote equality of outcomes • Universal health care; living wage policies;

Are we really rugged individualists? • Large majorities favor • Government regulation of Wall Street • Protecting the environment • Building or rebuilding our infrastructure • Economic Safety net

Public Support for Greater Government Role in Health Care Industry • Are we really rugged individualists? • Tocqueville, Democracy in America • Tocqueville’s Vision • Frontier and widespread property ownership • Life characterized by atomistic social freedom • Do not need strong state or class movement to create upward mobility • New world creates faith in individualism

Traditional Explanations no feudal aristocracy—no landed aristocracy to provide a conservative view minimal taxes few legal restraints frontier provides opportunities—easy for ambitious individuals to succeed nation of small independent farmers • Louis Hartz, from The Liberal Consensus

Is the American polity characterized by hegemonic liberal democratic values? • All men are created equal • Endowed with certain inalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness • Government derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed”

“All men are created equal.” • Multiple Traditions” Critique • “Americans share a common culture, but one more complexly and multiply constituted than is usually acknowledged.”

“Multiple Traditions” Critique Rogers Smith --> • Americanpoliticalculture is the “complex patterns of apparently inconsistent combinations of traditions, accompanied by recurring conflicts.” • Complex Mix of liberal and ascriptive forms of Americanism at the same time • "fail[s] to give due weight to inegalitarian ideologies and conditions that have shaped the participants and the substance of American politics just as deeply" as liberalism has

Contd. • At the republic’s founding, the “comparative moral, material, and political egalitarianism that prevailed . . . among moderately propertied white men was surrounded by an array of other fixed, ascriptive systems of unequal status, all largely unchallenged by the American revolutionaries

for “at least two-thirds of American history, the majority of the domestic adult population was . . . ineligible for full American citizenship solely because of their race, original nationality, or gender” • Reconstruction period- example of liberal and ascriptive traditions

Civil War and Reconstruction • Slavery abolished • All persons born in US deemed citizens, regardless or race, creed, or gender • None could be denied voting rights on racial grounds • BUT,

Darwinism and Spencerism • “Intellectual and political elites develop the most elaborate theories of racial and gender hierarchy in US history and embody them in staggering array of laws governing naturalization, immigration, deportation, voting rights, electoral institutions. ”

Intellectual Credibility – Racial Hierarchies • “black, brown, and red races … (had) a peculiar mental temperament which has become hereditary. Leaving them constitutionally recreant to the cues of civilization ” 1895

Daniel Brinton, President, American Association for the Advancement of Science • CA Senator, John MIller • 40 centuries of Chinese life had “ground into” the Chinese race characteristics that made them unbeatable competitors against the free white man. They were “automatic engines of flesh and blood” far below the Anglo-Saxon- such that immigration of Chinese laborers must be banned. • Chinese Exclusion Act

Senator Lodge’s Literacy Test • “Research shows it will exclude the Italians, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Asiatics,… thereby preserving “the quality of our race and citizenship.”

Are you smart enough to be a US Citizen? • What is the supreme law of the land? • What is the economic system in the United States? • Name one branch or part of the government.* • We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years? • Who vetoes bills? • What are twoways that Americans can participate in their democracy? • Name one American Indian tribe in the United States.

Sources: • Thanks to Skidmore University for permission to use in class.

American Political Culture